Blood and Titans
by Blackout785
Summary: After Eren seemingly dies during the battle of Trost, Mikasa prepares to go down fighting. Just as she is facing her own death, a random occurrence fills her with resolve once more, and something left untouched for five years awakens. Titan shifter!Mikasa, AU, possible MikaEren in later chapters.
1. Chapter 1

**What can I say, I was inspired to write this and so I did. Check out JamJackEvo's "A Cruel and Beautiful World" it's the main inspiration for this fic and probably around a million times better. Seriously, check it out. Also sorry if Mikasa seems OOC and changes her mind constantly, remember that she is under heavy mental stress. And if there's going to be Romance (not sure about that quite yet), it'll be MikaEren.** **There will be blood, gore, and mentions of suicide, though if you're a fan of Attack on Titan you're probably not that shocked by it at this point.**

**Summary: After Eren seemingly dies during the battle of Trost, Mikasa prepares to go down fighting. Just as she is facing her own death, a random occurrence fills her with resolve once more, and something left untouched for five years awakens. Titan shifter!Mikasa, AU, possible MikaEren in later chapters.**

**Trost district, T-Minus 10 minutes**

The world was a beautiful place.

But it was also cruel.

So damnably cruel, cruel enough that it would give you a moment of respite to close your wounds before it would rip them open again, thought one Mikasa Ackerman as she sped across the rooftops of Trost.

What other explanation could there be to how it seemed to make sure Mikasa couldn't keep her promises no matter how hard she tried.

After her parents died, she had vowed to herself that she would not idly stand by and let others do it for her should it happen again- But when it did, she had been helpless.

When the debris from the Colossal Titan's attack fell on their house, without Eren there she wouldn't have even thought to go check on Carla-_Mother_. She had more than earned the title by taking Mikasa in and treating her as her own. When they reached the house, she would have been frozen in place by the sight of her adoptive Mom trapped under the fallen debris from the wall if not for Eren urging her to at least try and help her.

When it became clear that they could not possibly move her in time, Mikasa and Eren would both have been dead if not for Hannes interfering, still trying to futilely lift the wooden beam until the Smiling Titan would have devoured them all.

Mikasa had vowed to protect Eren, the only family she had left, but only succeeded in annoying him and driving a wedge between them. It seemed as if she could only be there for the everyday things, like making sure Eren ate enough or making sure that the bruises he acquired during training would at least heal before he charged back into the sparring ring. But when it came down to it, she had allowed herself to be placed on the rearguard, foolishly having allowed Eren's promise to stay alive to soothe her into a false sense of security.

And now Eren was _dead._

Dead.

She remembered the words all too well. She remembered Armin's shaky voice as he desperately tried to hold back tears.

_"Tomas Wagner. Nack Teaz. Millius Zermesky. Mina Caroline. And Eren Yeager… The aforementioned five… Bravely fell in the line of duty."_

Mikasa also remembered her own words as she calmed Armin down.

_"This is neither the time nor the place to be emotional."_

She also remembered how even as the words left her own mouth; she knew that she was _a fucking hypocrite._

What right did she have to accuse them of being emotional when she was herself barely managing to keep her finely crafted mask together, to not show weakness in front of the others?

And after that, what right did she have to accuse them of being cowards, when she was already planning her _own goddamn death?_

What right did she have to accuse them of incompetence, to claim that she could take on the Titans in the Headquarters when she knew that she wasn't even going to survive half of the trip there?

Not because she couldn't take the HQ back, she simply _wouldn't._

Because why should she, when didn't care about it anymore? All she had cared about was her family, and it was all _gone._

All that was left was for her to die, so that she could join them in whatever awaits beyond this world, if there is any. She didn't know, but what she did know was that it would be better for her to die with her family than live on without them.

And no matter how Mikasa looked at it, the 104th Trainees Squad was not her family. Even Armin had always been more Eren's friend than hers, and while she did sometimes enjoy spending time with him, she didn't have the same bond with Armin as she did with Eren.

She had already planned how she would go. It was the way she believed Eren would've wanted her to go, and certainly the only way she could imagine herself go.

By taking down as many of those damned Titans with her.

She might be a coward for it, but Mikasa knew she could never directly take her own life. She didn't have the courage to simply use one of her swords or misplace one of her 3DMG maneuvers. No, she would die fighting.

Mikasa supposed she should've asked Armin about what the Titan that eventually felled Eren looked like, but the blonde was nothing if not skilled in deduction. He would realize what she was planning and try to stop her.

Mikasa pulled her scarf to cover the whole of her lower face as she maneuvered through the broken city of Trost, towards the HQ. After seeing a Titan, a 15-meter class looking like a middle-aged blonde man with a drunken expression on the distorted face walking between the abandoned buildings in the middle of a medium-sized alleyway, she fired her hooks and closed in.

She took a quick look around her. It seemed like the remaining Trainees of the 104th had been sufficiently motivated to follow her.

Good.

They would've died for sure if they stayed there, and taking the HQ was really the only way they'd even have a fighting chance.

Approaching it from the front, Mikasa fired both of her grapple-hook at the 15-meter class Titans face and swung past it, before reeling in and using her momentum to achieve maximum force. Combined with her momentum and perfect timing, her two blades lopped off a sizable chunk from the nape of its neck.

The Titan fell with a resounding thump whilst Mikasa continued her arc through the air before hooking into a chimney and swinging around to deliver another killing blow, this time to a 7-meter.

Five minutes of rapid maneuvering, four broken swords, and a dozen dead Titans later, Mikasa landed onto a rooftop to catch her breath and look around.

Whilst she had killed many, it seemed that the tide of Titans was simply endless. The amount of Titans in Mikasa's immediate surrounding had tripled since she began killing them. She noticed Armin and Connie nearby, it looked like the rest of the Trainees had opted to continue and not get bogged down.

Good, she didn't want a large audience for what would happen next.

She used a burst of gas to leap towards a 14-meter class that had been closing in on her position, stabbing it in the eyes before it could react. She then flipped over its head as it brought its hands up to smack her.

Fortunately for her, this Titan was both clumsy and stupid, only managing to punch its own head while Mikasa took advantage of the distraction and stabbed it in the neck.

As she pressed the triggers to fire both hooks to the building on each side of her in order to swing herself over to the next Titan, only the right one triggered.

She knew that she had been using way too much gas, and that soon she would run out, but she hadn't managed to keep track of when exactly she'd run dry.

Her coordination broken, Mikasa tried to reel in with her right hook, but was sent tumbling down to the pavement as the right canister also run out mid-swing.

She had been lucky; the gas had run out when her angle of approach to the ground wasn't too steep. Mikasa dropped her swords and rolled with the blow, but it still knocked the wind out of her. She rolled along the pavement before coming to a stop when the right cable, still attached to the adjacent house, reached its maximum length.

She was bruised all over, she was pretty sure something broke internally, and she was covered in blood. Most of it was steaming Titan-blood, but there was some of her own mixed in.

Mikasa struggled back up; tapping a switch in her 3DMG harness, and the right hook disconnected and reeled in. The complex system was designed so that even with no gas left, soldiers could disconnect and reel in their hooks so that they wouldn't get stuck in place. They could always cut the cable, but then the harness would be practically useless even if resupplied with gas.

Mikasa took quick look around her assessing her situation. She saw Armin and Connie still engaged with their own respective enemies, and more importantly, the two dozen Titans converging on her at varying distances. There were at least two 15-meters and the rest were between 12-and 4-meters.

This was finally it.

But she wouldn't go down easily.

She saw a 9-meter running at her from the front, its arms flailing and its mouth frothing, while two others, 6-and 7-meters, approached from directly her right.

Mikasa grabbed two more blades from her sheath, readjusted her scarf and darted forward with all the speed she could muster, formulating a battle plan.

If she was going to go down, she might as well try out a couple of moves she had planned but never dare to use due to their incredible riskiness.

She slid to her knees and sliced the tendons on the 9-meters legs, causing it to fall down flat on its face. She turned around, ran across its back before slashing it in the nape of its neck and leaping off as the two Titans approaching from the other direction tripped on the 9-meters body and crashed down too. She slashed their necks too, before discarding her now-useless swords and drawing a new pair.

As the Titans evaporated around her sending steam all around, Mikasa hadn't noticed the 15-meter Titan sneak up on her before it reached down and grabbed her, lifting her towards its mouth.

_'Not yet!'_

Without a word, Mikasa sliced the fingers off the hand just as the Titan was about to devour her, sending blood flying in all directions. She couldn't avert her trajectory with no gas left, and so she was roughly shoved towards the Titans face; its mouth stretched wide open in a horrible grin.

_'I might as well make the most out of this.'_

Mikasa flew into the Titans mouth feet fist as the massive jaws snapped shut. She had a plan, but the next part would require perfect timing. She heard Armin scream something, but she ignored it and pressed on. Landing into the slimy interior, she brought her right arm down to slow her slide.

Or, at least she tried to.

Then she realized that she wasn't feeling her right arm move.

Then she realized that she wasn't feeling her right arm at all.

Then she realized that she hadn't entirely made it past the Titans jaws.

And then, the pain hit her.

Mikasa came very close to letting go of her sword and grasping the stump of her right arm as the overwhelming pain rolled over her. Instead, she bit down on her lips hard enough to draw blood and concentrated on making this work.

With all her might, Mikasa leapt forward and rammed her remaining sword into the back of the Titans throat.

_'One meter tall and 10 centimeters wide… I wonder if I managed pierce deep enough?'_

She had, during one of those long and boring theory lessons where she had already known what they were teaching, theorized that it might be possible to stab the weak spot of the Titan from the inside.

After that, she had sneaked into Instructor Shadis' office to take a look at one of the many sketches and graphs the man had about Titans. There was one that had particularly interested her, a sketch made by an artist from the witness of a Survey Corps soldier who had been devoured whole by a Titan, but had been saved when one of her comrades had killed it mere seconds later, and whatever other info they had managed to gather in the brief amounts of time they had whenever a Titan was slain.

From the sketch, Mikasa had identified the spot where the back of the neck was the closest to the digestive tract, and theorized that if one were to be devoured by a Titan, one might be able to pierce through its flesh and stab that weak spot.

Of course, considering that the ideal kill was with two blows from the back, Mikasa knew that it was basically down to luck on whether the blade managed to take out whatever it was that made that particular spot a weakness, but she also knew that she didn't really have other options.

Just as she had rammed the blade as deep as she could, another wave of pain rolled from her stump of a right arm, whilst simultaneously the entire Titan lurched forward, and her hold on the handle slipped.

A few moments later the Titans body had evaporated away, Mikasa was lying in the middle of the street surrounded by a pool of blood and the carcasses of the Titans previous victims.

She was covered in slime and just about hanging onto consciousness.

She barely managed to get to a sitting position to watch as the remaining Titans closed in.

_'So this is it, huh?'_

Mikasa knew that she had no chance here, she couldn't even _move,_ much less fight. She managed to gather the resolve to relieve the pressure from the stump and use her remaining arm to draw her last remaining sword. In a moment of peace amidst the chaotic sounds of battle originating farther away and the slow rumble of the Titans approaching, she looked on her reflection on the side of the blade.

Her face was covered with bruises and her white shirt was nearly universally red from the amount of blood coming from the stump.

_'Maybe I should just do it with the sword. It'll be over quicker than if the Titans get me.'_

Mikasa began to angle the blade to plunge it into herself, but she caught another reflection on the blade.

Her scarf had, miraculously enough, managed to stay on her throughout the battle. It was red and battered, but it was Mikasa's most valuable possession throughout the years.

_'Eren…'_

She took another look around herself, her gaze sweeping across the abandoned alleyway.

The Titans were leisurely walking towards her, as if to prolong her life just to snatch it away at the end.

And those damn grins on their faces…

It was as if they were mocking Mikasa, taunting her that she couldn't protect Eren, smiling and confident that she was done for.

No.

They weren't mocking her…

She could take if they were, maybe she even deserved it.

But they weren't.

They were mocking _him._

They were mocking _Eren._

With all of the stress and guilt from his family dying, the pain from losing his arm and now _this, _something snapped inside her.

It was probably something important, but Mikasa couldn't bring herself to care.

Ignoring the pain from her wounds rapidly lessening, ignoring the increasingly weird feeling on her, ignoring the steam that appeared t come out from her, Mikasa slowly stood up, and for the first time since the battle began, she spoke:

"I will kill you."

**"I will kill you slowly and painfully."**

**_"I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU ALL!"_**

The flash of orange lighting could be seen from all corners of the city of Trost.

**T-Minus Zero.**


	2. Chapter 2

**So here's another chapter, thanks for all of the favorites, follows and especially reviews. If you need to listen to something while reading, I recommend the Two Steps From Hell Soundtrack. I did when I wrote this and it made even the task of looking through some web archive for an obscure fact on some minor side-characters backstory seem absolutely awesome. And for those of you who will get confused, Mikasa's Titan form is the first Female one witnessed by humanity, so it's designated as the Female Titan, and as such Annie's form will be named a bit differently. Also, do you people think that I should change the rating to M? I'm not quite sure, but some people may still not like the amount of gore present here.**

**Guest: Yeah it's kinda hard to see what goes through a stoic character's mind in manga or anime. Mikasa is a bit emotional in this but it's mainly because of Eren's death, I promise she'll be back to usual in later chapters. Anyway, thanks for support. I always love reviews and criticism is welcomed.**

**Yoruko-Chan: Thanks, I try my best. I've always liked the idea of Mikasa being a shifter too (kinda why I made this in the first place), and it's true that it'll probably never happen in canon. With Eren and the others there was at least some foreshadowing, and to add Mikasa now without any would be kind of a cheap shot (Except that's exactly what I'm doing here, isn't it). Maybe it'll happen later in canon but probably not without Armin, Jean and the others becoming shifters too. Or at least that's what I think. About the Mary Sue issue, don't worry. I've got some plans to ensure that while Mikasa is going to be the main focus of this fic, she won't outshine everyone else. Though if at any point you feel that I'm favoring her too much, feel free to inform me, I promise I won't take offense. **

**Anyway, on with the story then!**

**Trost district, T-Minus 3 minutes**

At the rooftop several hundred meters from where Mikasa was battling the horde of Titans, Armin Arlert was not having a good day. Not at all.

In fact, today was rapidly making progress to upset the day of the Fall of Wall Maria's place as the worst day of his life.

First, the Colossal Titan reappeared and broke through the Wall, then his squad and _Eren_ were killed, then Mikasa comes along and gives him hope, but it is all then crushed utterly.

Armin, too far away and too engaged against an 11-meter class Titan, watched as Mikasa runs out of gas and stumbles into the pavement. He watched in horror as the Titans closed in on the girl and watched with joy as Mikasa managed to take down three Titans even with no gas left, but it nearly cost him his own life. Preoccupied, he was nearly grabbed by his own adversary, but he barely managed to use a blast of pressurized gas to propel himself out of the horrendous humanoid's grasp.

Grunting in pain, Armin landed roughly on the rooftops. Connie was attempting to take down a 5-meter Titan, but he couldn't seem to maneuver fast enough to reach the back of its neck.

Armin tried to take a quick look at how Mikasa was doing, but the steam from the evaporation Titan carcasses had obscured the line of sight to her.

Firing up his 3D Maneuvering gear once more, Armin swung around one of the buildings in order to get closer and see what was going on, and missed the one of the hooks out of shock, ending up with him stuck in a tangle of cloth and cable. However, it did leave him with a perfect view of what was happening in the alley as the steam cleared.

A 15-meter Titan, this one with an abnormally huge nose, had the battered-looking Mikasa in its grasp, and was in the process of lifting her towards its misshapen mouth. Just at the last second, Mikasa managed to gain enough room to swing her blades around and slice off the fingers… but was too late to change her trajectory through the air.

"MIKASA!"

The Titans jaws clamped shut just as Mikasa passed through, severing her arm just below shoulder. Armin could only watch in horror as blood trailed from the limb as it fell through the air.

Too shocked to move, Armin barely even noticed the 15-meter turned towards him, as if looking straight his soul. It took a step forward, its feet digging into the stone.

This couldn't possibly be coincidence. There was no way that Mikasa would simply die like that She wouldn't just forget to check her gas levels, right? The only logical way that this could've happened was that Mikasa had planned to die.

_'So she was planning her death all along, even as she tried to inspire us to capture the HQ. So was it all a lie? Did she send us to our deaths just so that she could die?'_

No.

If Armin knew anything about Mikasa, she wouldn't be needlessly malicious about this sort of thing. She must have believed that they could take on the HQ even without her.

And then it really hit him.

_'They're all gone. Grandfather, Eren, Mikasa… all of them __**dead**__.'_

Armin wasn't sure that he could take it all. To go on alone, to fight on for humanity.

Alone.

But then, he remembered what Eren used to say.

_'If you don't fight you can't win. If you win you can live. If you lose, you die, but if you don't fight at all you can't possibly win, and thus you die anyway. So __**FIGHT'**_

_'I couldn't avenge Eren and I probably can't avenge Mikasa either, but the least I can do is stay alive for them.'_

Realizing that if he was to survive, Armin had to disentangle himself immediately before the Titan got to him, he began to twist in place until he could reach the switches for releasing the grapple-hooks.

Too focused on his task, Armin didn't notice the Titan freezing in Mid-step, nor did he notice the Titans body smacking on its face, evaporating nor Mikasa emerging from its remains.

The switch was just out of reach, mere millimeters away from Armin's extended fingers.

As the gigantic footsteps grew ever louder, Armin began to panic and focused utterly onto his task. Focused enough that he didn't notice the flash of orange lightning, but not focused enough to not notice the 6-meter Titan sailing through the air and crashing into the building adjacent to the one he was still attached to.

Forgetting his task for a second, Armin jerked his head to the side to look at the crashed Titan. Its neck had been crushed by a significant force, with particular damage to the nape.

What could possibly have enough force to _crush_ a Titan's neck and propel it through the air? Coming up with no ideas, Armin turned to look where it had come from, and then he saw it.

A monster.

It was undoubtedly a Titan, but unlike any that Armin had seen before.

The first thing he noted when observing it was that it was, without a shadow of a doubt, female.

Whilst no one on their right mind would call Armin experienced in the physique of women, the 104th had gone through a series of mandatory Sex Ed classes, and even Armin wouldn't mistake that kind shape. No other Titan thus far had been female, and he was pretty sure someone would've mentioned it by now if one had been sighted.

The new Titan was tall, at least a 15-meters but it looked to be slightly crouched so Armin wasn't quite certain about it. She was rather muscular, far more so than any of its other relatives except possibly for the Armored Titan. Armin wasn't sure, the boat had been quite a distance away when it broke the Wall Maria gate. Most of her was covered in yellowish skin, but smaller parts were exposed, displaying red muscle tissue. The Titan seemed to posses no flesh on her cheeks or lips, leaving the teeth uncovered. In addition to that, its head was covered by short, black hair.

The Female Titan was currently grappling with another one, closing her hands around its neck. The snap was clearly audible in the street as the Female Titan crushed the others neck, who immediately went limp. After that the Female… assumed a martial arts stance and flipped the body over its head and straight into another Titan.

What

The Hell

Was

Going

On?

This just opened another can of worms.

Why were the Titans attacking each other? But that soon took a back seat as he pondered the quite possibly even more important question:

How on God's name did the Female Titan acquire martial training? And now that Armin thought about it, where was that 15-meter that devoured Mikasa? A quick look around confirmed that it was nowhere to be seen. So he could only come up with one theory.

_'Oh, God. What the hell is this?'_

So Mikasa gets eaten, the Titan that did it disappears, and a new one appears moments after.

The new Titan had short, black hair, just like Mikasa.

The new Titan knows martial arts, just like Mikasa.

The new Titan was female, like Mikasa.

He didn't want to believe it, but the evidence was staring right at him.

Just to further confirm his fears, the Female turned around to face the Titan it had just smacked, and Armin got a full good look at her eyes.

They had large, grey irises and a steely look on them. Just like Mikasa's.

And that was all the evidence Armin needed. It couldn't possibly be coincidence.

The Female Titan was Mikasa. Or at least it was before; Armin wasn't quite sure about right now.

_'But there's no way that it's possible. If this had happened before, there would've been at least some kind of mentions about it. So why would it only happen now, when dozens of soldiers have been getting eaten all over the city? Maybe it has something to do with some sort of "worthiness" like being a powerful soldier… but as much as I'd like to believe otherwise, there's just no way that Mikasa just so happened to be "worthier" than all of the previous generations of warriors who had also gotten eaten, but not transformed. It's just not statistically possible. So what brought this about? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Mikasa is half-Oriental? But according to the history books the Orientals were wiped out by Titans, and there were no mentions of anything like this happening. And before that their numbers were lowered by centuries of interbreeding with the majority population, so it's not like there was any shortage of part-Orientals to get eaten by Titans too.'_

_'Or maybe this has some kind of connection to the Colossal and Armored Titans? Maybe it is some sort of mechanism that the Titans use to breach the heavier defenses? Maybe there's some sort of central intelligence that uses particularly powerful humans as some sort of catalysts to create stronger Titans when it looks like their advance is stuck?'_

_'So maybe it's testing this new one against the others?'_

To be honest, Armin really had no evidence or even clues on what the hell could behind this all. He was broken out of his thoughts by the Female Titan who, having finished off several Titans already, punched a 12-meter class with enough force to send it staggering backwards straight towards where Armin was still stuck to the wall by the 3D maneuvering cables.

Desperately ignoring the cables chafing burns into his skin, Armin just about managed to reach the switch to reel in the cables. Flipping it, he disconnected the hooks from the wall, and fell to the rooftop.

He ignored the stings of pain made by the hooks digging into his flesh on their way back to the launchers, and began to move away from the approaching Titan as fast as he could.

Even with giving himself a boost by gas, Armin only just managed to get away from the Titan before it crashed into the building, wrecking through several floors before stopping.

He quickly located Connie, and made his way over to his classmate. He was taking cover behind a chimney, his Titan opponent apparently having decided that the Female Titan was an easier enemy than the elusive human.

From the way the she was demolishing the normal Titans, it was quite clear that it wasn't so.

_'But then again, no one's ever accused the Titans of being smart.'_

"What the hell is that thing?" Connie asked as Armin joined him.

"I really have no idea," Armin lied, concentrating on the Female Titan.

Five Titans were lying on the ground beneath her feet in various stages of vaporization, the napes of their necks crushed by the Female Titan's blows. The Titan itself was in the process of rapidly diminishing the horde of Titans in the alleyway.

It was like something out of a fever dream, as the Female Titan punched, kicked and twisted its way through the Titans, utilizing wrestler holds, martial art throws and other basic hand-to-hand techniques all military units were taught.

A Titan tried to bite into her back, but the Female caught it with both arms and flung it forward, before driving her fingers into the nape of its neck, rendering the Titan limp.

The Female then dropped to the ground and swept her leg around, cleaving through the legs of two other Titans before punching the third ones head off and then returning to finish off the two lying on the ground.

Armin could only watch as the nightmarish form breathed heavily in the soft glow of the sun whilst the smoke and steam swirled around her, pouring from the decaying forms lying on the street and the bite wounds all over the Female.

The Female Titan rose to its full length and let out a long, bloodcurdling screech, as if a challenge for the Titans to come and do battle with her.

Against all expectations, it was answered. It was a long roar filled with anguish and rage, and a new foe appeared.

It looked surprisingly similar to the Female, being 15 meters in height and similar muscle tone and body shape, but this one was undoubtedly male. It had long, elvish ears and an elongated face, cheeks and jaw, along with a blazing green eyes and a mop of nearly shoulder-length brown hair.

It was clear that whatever the Female Titan was, this was a male specimen of the same breed.

The Male Titan had leapt over a building, landing on top of one of the Titans the Female had incapacitated but not killed, and with a crunching noise, severed its neck.

_'So was this another test, a sparring match? But why would they keep it here, right in the middle of enemy territory? There's something I'm not seeing here.'_

The Male turned to look at the Female, letting out another roar and raised his arms into a boxer's stance. The Female let out a roar of her own as well, before assuming a stance too.

The two Giants circled around each other, unwilling to make a move. After a while, the Female Titan brought its hand forward before twisting her wrist in the common "Come at me" gesture.

"What the fuck?" Connie let out.

And to confirm that both sides of the fight were at least somewhat intelligent, the Male, apparently intelligent enough to take offense, let out another roar before charging forward with his fists raised. The Female parried the first blow with an audible snap as bones were broken by the sheer force the both combatants were exerting. She then dodged under the second blow before grabbing the Male's hand and flipping him over herself, slamming him face-first into the pavement. She then went on to follow up with a kick to the neck, but before she could do that, the Male spun around and punched the Female to the side, knocking her backwards into the adjacent building.

This wasn't happening. If these Titans were this good against each other, what chance did humanity have against them? These were the perfect killing machines, fast enough to swat soldiers using 3D Maneuvering Gear from the sky like insects, strong enough to break through any wall humans could build, tough enough to take on cannonfire and smart enough to use tactics. If there were more of these, humanity would be screwed.

The Male Titan leaped back to his feet before roughly grabbing the Female and sinking his teeth into the latter's upper left arm. Blood sprayed as the Male's jaw-muscles drove the flat bits of bone ever deeper into the Female's flesh, before it relented and resorted grabbed the appendage and ripped it off, blood flying everywhere. The Female, still leaning against the building, used its remaining arm to grab the chimney from the rooftop, rip it off and then use it as a primitive club to smash the Male's face.

The Male, face covered in blood, let out another roar, this time distorted weirdly due the damage his jaw had suffered. Before he could retaliate, the Female smashed her leg against the Male's left foot, causing an explosion of bone, gore and stone shards and sending shockwaves across the street. Armin and Connie could feel the vibrations even from where they were hiding.

_'Such power…'_

Not to be outdone, the Male Titan's uppercut smashed apart the Female's jaw and sent her flying across the street and into the buildings on the opposite side. Following it up, the Male thundered across the street before tackling the Female, smashing her against the buildings once more.

After that, he rose up and kicked his foot right into the middle of the Female's spine, before grabbing her by the back of the head and dragging it against the building walls, leaving behind a trail of blood as the Female's face was ripped apart by the glass and wood splinters.

The Female was in bad shape, her spine twisted in an unnatural angle and bits of bone stuck out from under the skin. Her left arm was still healing, and her face was a mess of torn flesh and splintered bone.

With another mighty roar that seemed to shake the very buildings themselves, the Male prepared to land a finishing blow to the back of the Female's neck to end the fight, but the Female wasn't finished yet. She swept her leg into the Male's still-healing left leg, making it lose balance at the critical moment of the punch. She then spun around and grabbed the Male's fist with her own. Before the Male could retaliate, the Female twisted his arm into an unnatural angle, snapping bones, muscle and tendons in the Male's arm.

Then, she brought her still-steaming left arm to throw the Male away from her, before getting up and jumping after him. The Male landed heavily into the pavement, creating shockwaves and cracking the stone once more, and was soon followed by the Female landing on his chest. She then grabbed both of the Male's arms and began to drag them upwards while using her legs to hold the Male in place. With a roar of pain from the Male, The Female Titan tore off the hands, severing them at the elbow, and threw them to the side.

Not waiting for the follow-up, the Male brought his legs together, and slammed them into the Female's back, sending her toppling off from on top of him.

As both of the combatants scrambled back up, steam pouring from their numerous wounds, The Male managed to get in a position to attack first, and did so, jumping forward and headbutting the Female. A follow-up sweeping kick shattered her legs from the ankle down, and without waiting further, the Male leaped up, driving both of his knees into the Female's face. Without functioning arms to balance him, the Male then fell on his face after they both crashed into the ground.

The two killing machines then slowly rose up, the Male due to the difficulties in using the slowly regenerating stumps to lift himself up, and the Female due to her crushed feet.

The Female managed, by the margin of few seconds, to regenerate first and was thus in a better position to attack once the Male got up slightly after her. The Male, having regenerated his arms up to the wrists, brought them in a guard, but they proved to be of little use once the Female began her assault. Raining a punch after punch into the Male, she slowly whittled down the Male's defenses and drove his back into one of the buildings near where Armin and Connie were hiding.

With his arms ruined once more by the Female's continuous assault, couldn't do a thing to stop her as the Female brought her right fist back, and, putting all of her might behind that one blow, punched it into the Male's chest. With a thunderous crack, the attack penetrated the ribcage and forced its way throughout whatever internal organs the Titan had. The Female then, with a terrible mulching sound that Armin knew he'd never forget, brought her hand back out, showering both of them with blood, gore and bone shards.

The Female then grabbed the Male in a two handed hold, before giving out another screech and flung the Male on top of the building, the massive Titan sinking several floors in before stopping.

_'There's no way that's a sparring match. So could it be that this occurrence wasn't intentional? Maybe… maybe whatever happened to Mikasa was an accident, and the Male Titan was sent in to take care of the threat? So does that mean Mikasa is still in control of her actions? Or is it simply her body, a new creature created from the old, confused and angered by what is happening? I have no idea.'_

The Female Titan let out a victorious roar, looking as if from a painting of old, a victorious warrior reigning over her fallen foe. The Female then took a step forward, looking ready to finish off the Male, but then it seemed as if something shifted.

She stopped midstep, and simply stared at her crushed opponent. If Armin could've judged the facial expression, it looked like as if she might be sad. But the moment faded, and the Female gave a victorious roar before looking around her and turning her head, as if listening for the sounds of more enemies to destroy.

The silence in the alley was deafening, and Armin didn't dare move an inch, hoping that Connie wouldn't do so either. He could hear his own heartbeat, and the intensity of the situation only grew, until the moment was broken by crashing and thumping sounds coming from the open are several city block away. The Female immediately turned her attention there, before leaving in a dash faster than Armin could've ever thought something of her size to be capable of.

Snapping out of his stupor, Armin began left the cover of the chimney… and immediately jumped back as the sounds of shifting wood and stone could be heard from where the Male Titan had crashed. Armin darted back, cautiously turning to look at the emerging Male Titan. Having regenerated its arms, he lifted himself from the demolished building.

It, too had an almost sad look as it shook the debris off of his body, but a loud crash and a scream, undoubtedly from a Titan and an unfortunate victim, coming from the opposite direction than where the Female had gone off to caused his face to assume its standard expression; one of unbridled fury.

The Male took off in a burst of unnatural speed, leaving behind a trail of cracked pavement.

Armin and could only look at each other, their faces white from fear, an Armin was pretty sure they had both wet themselves. After a few moments of staring, they both uttered, in prefect synchronization, two words, taught to them by three long years of training under the particularly swear-prone instructor known as Keith Shandis.

"Fuck… Me…"


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary: After Eren seemingly dies during the battle of Trost, Mikasa prepares to go down fighting. Just as she is facing her own death, a random occurrence fills her with resolve once more, and something left untouched for five years awakens. Titan shifter!Mikasa, AU, possible MikaEren in later chapters.**

**Hello again everyone, have another update.**

**SrgntDrew: Thanks for the support, I hope that I continue to fill your expectations.**

**Yoruko-Chan: Thanks, I'm happy you are satisfied with the fight, I really just like writing fight scenes and it's nice to hear positive feedback.**

**Guest 1: Thanks, I tried my best but I'm not really good with emotions and stuff. Yeah, Eren's kind of stubborn. And they will fight side by side… eventually. No promised beyond that though. And about Annie… I hadn't thought about that. I'll have to see what I can do.**

**Guest 2: Thanks for telling me about the slip-up, it should be corrected now. About the rating, if no one's complaining I'll keep it at T.**

**monoke okami princess: Thanks for the support.**

**maesde: Thanks for the kind words. I'm sorry if that didn't seem clear enough for you, but what happened there should become apparent in a few chapters. I have plans to show a short recap about what Mikasa was feeling during that time. And about the pairings, I can promise that if there will be pairings, they will be EreMika, but I don't really like writing romance, so if there will be any, it'll be a sideshow to the real plot. And there will be no smut. At all. At any points. If any of you people feel that you need to read some, there are some perfectly good EreMika smutfics out there. This will not be one of them, and that's final.**

**T-Minus 15 minutes, Trost district.**

_'We-are-all-going-to-die-We-are-all-going-to-die-We-are-all-going-to-die,' _was all that went through the mind of one Jean Kirstein as he crashed through the windows of the Headquarters building's upper floor windows. Landing heavily on the floor, Jean rolled along until he smashed into a wooden desk, knocking the wind out of him.

He'd just about managed to get up before he had to dodge to the side in order to prevent Marco from crashing into him after the boy had followed him through the window. Several cracks and thumps confirmed that the two of them hadn't been the only ones to make it.

Looking around, Jean confirmed that Reiner, Bertolt and Annie, in addition to at least around 20 soldiers had managed to get through the gauntlet of Titans. What was more concerning matter, however, was that they had started with at least 30 before Jean ordered the charge.

_'Just how many people died because of my actions here?'_

No.

_'How many people died when I-… I… '_

Deep breath.

_'When I took advantage from the deaths of __**my own comrades**__?!'_

Holding back tears, Jean noticed something, or someone under the tables. Kneeling down, Jean came face-to-face with a black-haired man who obviously had been crying, and from the smell had probably crapped his pants too. He about his own age, probably a graduate from last year's Trainees, the 103rd. That information, however, held little place in his mind, as his guilt was rapidly replaced by anger.

"You. You're from the Supply Team, aren't you?"

Upon a shaky "Yeah," Jean suddenly darted forward and grabbed the man by the front of his shirt, dragging him out from under the table.

"Wha- Jean!" Marco's sound carried across the room, but Jean paid it no heed as he decked the fucker in the face. The man crashed to the floor, blood flying from his nose.

Before Jean could repeat the performance, Marco tackled him placed him on a hold. He tried to struggle but the taller boy held firm.

"JEAN!"

"IT'S THEIR DAMN FAULT! ALL OF IT! THEY HUNG US OUT TO DRY!"

He managed to kick the man in the side before another one of the Supply officer-assholes rolled him away and Marco forced him back,

"HOW MANY PEOPLE DIED BECAUSE POINTLESSLY BECAUSE OF YOU?! BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANY GAS TO MANEUVER AROUND WITH!? HOW MANY?! OH, THAT'S RIGHT! YOU HAVE NO IDEA BECAUSE YOU'VE BEEN CAMPING OUT HERE LIKE A BUNCH OF FAGGOTS , JERKING OFF WHILE THE REST OF US WERE GETTING EATEN!"

Jean couldn't believe it. All this time, these assholes were just hiding in here, not even trying to fix the problem. Probably a bunch of spineless twits who were too fat to enter Military Police who picked the easiest job they could find then promptly forgot all of their training and spent their time drinking on the job and partying…

Wait , what?

Wasn't that basically what Jean's career Plan B had been if he couldn't make it to the Military Police? When did he start to think that people who wished to join the Military police for comfort were spineless, considering he was one of them?

Too angry at his comrade's deaths to care, Jean continued;

"Well let me tell you!" he began, his voice at the start low and deadly, but rising back in volume as he took out all of his accumulated stress on these guys.

"HUNDREDS! HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE DEAD BECAUSE YOU COULDN'T BE ARSED TO MOVE FROM UNDER YOUR COMFY TABLES!"

"Some Titans managed to get into the supply room!" The blond girl who'd rolled the man away from Jean began sobbing. "There was nothing we could do!"

"WELL YOU SHOULD'VE FIGURED SOMETHING OUT YOU TWITS! IT'S PART OF THE FUCKING JOB DESCRIPTION!"

Jean was about to launch into another rant, but a shout from one of the other trainees and a large shape flicking past the windows made him and Marco dive to the side and take cover.

"INCOMING!"

A massive head crashed through the windows, taking down most of the wall with it, courtesy by one of the Titans, this one 15-meter class. The head sent many of the soldiers flying and turning the desks and other furniture into deadly wooden shrapnel that ripped through several Trainees.

While the others panicked and ran around like headless chicken, Jean got back up, looking at the several Titans hungrily smiling at them, even as they began to reach out and grab the remaining soldiers.

The Titans were massive. They could kill humans with a flick of their fingers and no amount of damage could kill them.

What the hell had he been thinking going up against these kinds of monsters?

They had been doomed from since the beginning.

His limbs going numb and his mind drawing a blank, Jean simply watched as the blond Titan brought its mouth forward, reaching out to devour him.

Just as the teeth were about to reach him, something incomprehensible happened. A massive fist, seemingly coming from nowhere, slammed into the Titans face, sending it crashing into the street. The sheer air displacement from the blow staggered Jean back several feet, but he stood his ground, his gaze tracking the source of the blow.

It was like a goddess in Titan form.

It was at least 15 meters tall, and ripped with muscle. It was also… _decidedly _feminine_._ Jean supposed he would've normally considered something like this to be amongst his deepest fantasies, except the blood splashed all over the Titan and the exposed teeth forming a feral grin kind of deducted from the atmosphere.

Everyone in the building looked utterly astonished. Even the usually stoic Annie could be heard muttering a quiet "what the fuck?"

"What the hell is this?!" Jean asked, confused as hell.

As if in response, an incredibly loud roar came from the Female Titan, forcing everyone in the building to clamp their hands over their ears from the sheer volume, before the massive creature leapt off to finish the Titan it had punched earlier.

Everyone just stood there staring at the hole in the wall, but they were shaken out of their reverie by the two forms, one blond and one with buzzed gray hair, crashing through a few of the remaining windows.

"Armin! Connie! Are you alright? Where's Mikasa?"

Armin got up from the floor, coughing and wheezing for breath.

"I don't know, we were separated. I think she ran out of gas."

Everyone hasped and a few took a step back in horror, but Jean wasn't convinced. The answer had come just a bit _too_ quickly and something in Armin's voice just didn't sound right.

"So why didn't you help her instead of coming here?"

Armin gasped and Connie took a step back, and Jean supposed that his words might have been a bit harsh, but he needed to know.

"Lo-Look," Connie managed to stutter. "There were Titans. Everywhere. A-And we just saw Mikasa at one spot, taking down T-Titans like it was nothing, and then we look again and she's g-gone. So we start to look around for her. And that t-thing, that Titan that killed the other ones, you saw it, right?"

Upon receiving a curt nod, he continued.

"So it appears, right out of nowhere, and begins to kill the other Titans. A-And another one just like it turns up and kills a few of the Titans before they fight each other."

Connie took a deep breath and continued.

"And… that one you just saw, it knocked out the other but didn't kill it, and then it wandered off in this direction. And then the other one wakes up and leaves in the opposite direction. And so, we look around a bit for Mikasa, but it was like she'd disappeared into thin air. And we realize that the Female Titan was going in the direction to here, the HQ. And since we had to get here anyway, we figure we should follow it, cuz' it's killing all the Titans it encounters, and that means it can clear the way for us. And that's how we got here," Connie finished, his voice a bit shaky but resolved.

_'This is bad. Really bad. I was counting on Mikasa's skill to help us clear the HQ. Oh god, she really is probably dead already, isn't she?'_

Jean took a deep breath and tried to think objectively.

_'So there was another rogue? I didn't sign up for this! What should we do, what should we do? Everyone is looking at me, like I'm some sort of leader. Well, considering I pretty much took charge, I guess I shouldn't be surprised… '_

After a moment of silent thinking, he opened his mouth once again.

"Did either of these Titans show aggression towards you?"

Armin fuzzed his brow and Jean could almost hear the gears whirring in his head.

"No. Or at the very least, it seemed to consider Titans a priority above us. A couple of times, it came close enough to attack us if it wanted to, but it always went after the Titans first. I have no idea what it'd do if it was alone with a human and no Titans nearby, and I have no real inclination to go and find out."

As soon as the blonde fell silent the room exploded into shouting and debate. Jean could hear only snippets from each conversation.

"We should bolt while that thing's distracting the Titans. No need to stay here and die stupidly

"The blonde brat is probably lying, trying to get us all killed. No way that a Titan's gonna start killing its own."

"The brat's speaking heresy! We should kill him now, before he corrupts us too!"

"We should kill it while it's distracted, and bring news to the higher-ups. We might even get a nice, fat reward for that."

It was chaos. Everyone was shouting and arguing, and Jean could even see Reiner, Bertolt and Annie have a heated discussion in the corner. Cupping his hands around his mouth Jean took a deep breath and shouted:

"EVERYONE SHUT UP!"

The room was deathly silent.

"We've got no time for debate and we've got to move fast. Now's not the time for arguments, we need to stand together in this if we want to have any hope of survival."

"Who the hell put you in charge?!" One of the older garrison soldiers questioned.

"No-one. but I have a plan, and unless you do too, shut up. At least hear me out, okay?"

"Bu-"

"Let him speak," came the voice of another Garrison soldier. "Burt, you didn't have any plan of your own so shut up and let the boy tell his."

Jean sighed and swept his gaze over the gathered soldiers, each of them looking at him expectantly.

"Okay, so I figure this shit is _way_ above our paygrade, so let's not waste time wondering about it right now. What we should be wondering about is getting into the armory, because no matter what we end up doing about that Titan, we'll be in a better position to do it with enough gas to move around. So if that Titan's gonna distract all of the Titans outside, no matter what we're going to do about it later, I say we take the chance and take the armory and barricade it shut before the Titans swarm in even more. So, does anyone have suggestions on how exactly we're going to bring down those Titans down there?"

The room was silent.

Then, the squeaky voice of Armin rang out.

"I… kind of have a plan. If I remember right, the gas supplies are on the bottom level, and there's a cargo elevator on the middle, right?"

"Yeah, what about it?" asked one of the supply officers.

"Well, the Titan's are attracted to large concentrations of humans, right? So we could lower a force of soldiers down with the cargo elevator, which would gather the Titans into one spot, and then have our best fighters sneak up behind them while they're distracted and cut their necks."

"But that would be pure suicide for the guys in the elevator! No way am I going to be a defenseless bait."

"Not quite defenseless," interrupted one of the supply officers. "There's a few crates of muskets and ammo up here in case of an emergency, so we can shoot them as they get close, and blind them so that the guys attacking from behind have a better chance at catching them!"

"Y-Yeah. That would work," Armin said.

* * *

**Trost district, upper floor of the supply HQ building, T-Minus 30 minutes.**

"This should be the last of them," Jean said as he walked into the room carrying a box with the garrison insignia mounted on its side. "Should be enough guns for everyone who's going into the lift."

"I've got good news and bad news myself," Armin responded from his position on the floor, fiddling with a pile of near-empty gas tanks salvaged from the various soldiers' 3D Maneuver Gear. "Bertolt and Reiner checked the bottom floor, and they say that there's seven 3-4 meter Titans down there."

"So what's the good news?"

"That was the good news. We're lucky there aren't more, because the bad news is that even with our resources pooled together; we barely got enough gas for seven people. So that means we'll have to get our best for the job, and even then it's going to cut it close."

Jean considered Armin's words and sighed.

"Yeah, I can see how that's going to be problem."

The two of them walked into the adjacent room where the rest of the survivors were getting ready. Jean dumped the ammo box in the corner, took a deep breath and shouted: "Okay everyone, gather up!"

They had earlier held a vote on who should be the leader of this operation, and despite some of them protesting, the majority voted Jean, stating that he had gotten them this far.

"We only have enough gas for seven people, so we'll have to select who's going to be the ambushers, while everyone else goes into the elevator. We need the best for the job, and I was thinking it'll be Reiner, Bertolt, Annie, Sasha, myself-"

"Hey wait a second!" one of the Garrison soldiers interrupted. "How do you know you newbies are the best for the job? And why are you putting yourself into the group that _doesn't_ get used as bait? I smell abuse of power."

It was once again the same Garrison soldier who had backed Jean up earlier, who whacked the soldier who had accused Jean at the back of the head. "It's because they're fresh out of training, so they haven't had time to dull their skills in endless guard duty. Please continue, Jean."

"Right. As I was saying, the ambush force is going to be Reiner, Bertolt, Annie, Sasha, myself, Connie and Marco. Any more questions? Good, then let's get started."

He'd placed one of the older Garrison soldiers (Adolf he thought was the name) in charge of the Elevator squad. His mission was to keep the men calm and hold their fire until they were close enough to shoot the Titan's eyes.

"Wait ten minutes to give us time to get into position, and then start lowering the elevator."

Upon receiving confirming nods, Jean led the seven members of the ambush squad down the stairs that would take them to the support beams overlooking the lower floor.

"We have no gas to waste, plus the noise would alert the Titans, so we're going to have to do it the old-fashioned way; by climbing."

The rest of the way, the seven of them tried to appear as carefree as possible, recounting basic instructions and trying to crack a few jokes.

No-one was fooled, of course. Everyone knew that they were just trying to calm their nerves.

"Do you really think we can take them with this little gas left?" Connie asked, sounding worried. "I mean, can we even get into position without using any gas? And what if we run out of gas mid-attack? The elevator squad would be toast."

It was Reiner who spoke up, "Don't worry, Bertolt and I checked out the bottom floor, it shouldn't be that hard getting up to those beams and us taller ones can help you shorties. And don't worry about killing the Titans, if you get in trouble, just shove a blade up their ass!" He joked. "It's their secret weakness!"

Connie and Sasha, of course, took it literally:

"No way! I didn't even know about that!"

"Never heard of it either…"

"Reiner, shut up or I'll shove one up _yours,_" Jean interrupted. "Stop confusing people with jokes and focus on the job." The rest of the way passed in silence.

They reached the small balcony overlooking the rest of the hall, just below one of the large steel support beams. Reiner and Bertolt crouched down and began to lift the shorter ones up high enough to reach the girders, and climbed after them when everyone was through. Silently, they sneaked their way across the metal grid, careful not to make any noise.

Once in position around the elevator shaft, they waited until they heard the squeaks and groans of the seldom used lifting machinery. Due to his position behind the vertical metal beams and his focus on following the movements of the Titans, Jean couldn't actually see the elevator squad coming down, but he could hear them just fine.

"Calmly… Calmly…" Adolf's voice could be heard above the groans of the Titans. "Let them get closer… Calmly… Just a little bit closer… FIRE!"

The combined flashes of two dozen muskets being fired simultaneously illuminated the storage room, and the wet splotches told Jean at least a few of them hit their marks.

"NOW!"

Bertolt, Reiner, Annie, Sasha, Connie Jean and Marco leapt from their positions on the supporting beams, launching their grapple-hooks and closing in on the Titans at highs speeds.

**CLIFFHANGERS FOR EVERYONE! also because I'm leaving for a visit with a some relatives and since I can't write this there, I'll end it here. And for those of you who may have caught that in Canon, they didn't have ****_any_**** gas left when they attacked the HQ, the explanation is simple. With not one but TWO rogue Titans killing off the regulars, a few more people made it through and generally people had to waste less gas with less Titans to kill.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary: After Eren seemingly dies during the battle of Trost, Mikasa prepares to go down fighting. Just as she is facing her own death, a random occurrence fills her with resolve once more, and something left untouched for five years awakens. Titan shifter!Mikasa, AU, possible MikaEren in later chapters.**

**Hello again, everyone. Thanks for all of the reviews and special mention to NoNameAvailable Bis who made an excellent and enjoyable review which also managed to correctly guess many of my intentions (Seriously, it's like he's psychic or something), thus leading to me changing around a few bits so I'm not quite as predictable.**

**Yoruko-Chan: Thanks for the kind words, positive feedback is what keeps me going.**

**NoNameAvailable Bis: Well, I already answered to you with a PM so I don't really have much to say here, other than thanks again for such an awesome review.**

**Trost district, lower floor of the supply HQ building, T-Minus 40 minutes.**

As four massive carcasses smashed into the stone floor of the storage room, one of them dead by his own blades, Jean knew they were in pretty much the worst scenario.

There were seven Titans, but only four corpses, so that left three unaccounted for.

His blades red with Titan blood and adrenaline hammering in his veins, Jean rolled along the floor to lessen the blow of landing before finally landing on a crouch. A quick look around told him that Connie, Sasha and Marco had failed in killing their opponents, missing the weak spots on the napes of their necks. The three blinded Titans staggered in the confines of the storage room, the three failed ambushers desperately attempting to stay from their reach.

After a few terrifying heart beats, the Titans eyes regenerated, and the battle entered a new phase. Desperate to help his comrade and long-time friend, Jean, shaken from his stupor, darted forward to where Marco was trying and gradually failing to dodge the 4-meter Titans attempts at grabbing him. As he sped forth with all the speed he could muster, Jean also saw Annie and Reiner head towards the Titans Sasha and Connie were facing, respectively, whilst Bertolt also headed to help Marco.

Back to the issue at hand, Jean noted that Marco must have sprained his leg when he attacked, as he seemed to favor his other leg and was dodging with unusual sluggishness. Just as the Titans hand closed around his best friend's body, Jean made a split second decision and sacrificed all of his remaining gas to launch his grapple-hooks and reel himself forward as he brought his swords over his head in order to put all of his strength behind the next blow.

Bringing his swords down just at the right moment, Jean slashed apart the Titans hands, spraying blood in all directions and releasing Marco from its hold. The two of them fell to the ground in a tangle of people, blood, 3DMG cables and Titan flesh.

With Marco on top of him and his cables tangled, Jean was effectively immobilized and could do nothing to help as the now armless Titan simply bent it's head down to devour them whole… before Bertolt dropped from the above, cutting into the nape of its neck, killing it near-instantly.

Bertolt landed next to them and silently cut the cables holding Jean and Marco in place, and the two friends rolled off of each other and rose up.

Looking around, Jean saw that the battle was already over, the Titan carcasses steaming as they evaporated. Everyone was already reinforcing the doors to prevent more Titans from getting in, whilst others grabbed as much gas and supplies as they could and loaded it into the cargo elevator, so that even if the Titans swarmed the bottom floor again, they would already have what they needed from the lower floor. Some people had already left the building, their gas tanks filed and their holsters refilled with blades. Jean observed Sasha trying to speak to Annie, but the stoic girl simply ignored the brunette and continued to refill his gas tanks.

It was then, as the adrenaline began to clear from his system, that Jean realized that someone was periodically sobbing and shouting in pain, and somewhere in the back of his mind he identified it as Connie's voice.

Following the voice, his eyes fell upon Reiner crouching over the form of the buzz-haired boy lying on his back, mostly obscured from view by Reiner's far larger form. Armin was also there, handling a medical kit.

Running over, Jean saw what exactly had made Connie give out such noise.

His right arm was mangled and crushed nearly beyond recognition, joints sticking out in wrong angles and bone shards jutted out under the skin. Blood was seeping from numerous wounds, and from the way Connie gasped in pain with every breath, some of his ribs were probably broken. Armin was administering painkillers that rapidly rendered Connie unconscious, while Reiner was splinting the arm as well as he could.

"What happened?" Jean blurted out, almost afraid of what he was going to hear.

"He didn't manage to make the kill, and the Titan trampled him with its feet before Reiner managed to take it down," Armin answered, never once taking his eyes off of Connie, but Jean could hear his voice faltering. "He's in bad shape; he'll need to be taken back to the field hospital beyond Wall Rose if he's going to have any chance of surviving."

"I'll take him!" Reiner responded immediately, getting up after finishing the splint.

"You- You can't!" Bertolt protested, shock evident on his face. "We need to-"

"_No_." Reiner responded, his voice hard and his face riddled with sorrow."Connie was wounded because I wasn't fast enough. It's my fault, my responsibility, and I will see it to the end. I'm taking Connie to the field hospital, and you can come with me or stay, but I'm going."

"No, we'll take him," a new voice said.

Jean spun around to see Adolf, the Garrison soldier who had been in charge of the Elevator squad, along with a couple of other soldiers with the Garrison insignia on their jackets.

"We've got some other wounded too, and me and a bunch of others are taking them to the medics, so can take the boy with us all the same." Sensing the protest Reiner was about to voice; the man put his hand on his shoulder reassuringly and sighed. "Look, son. I know that feeling too, I was on duty when Wall Maria fell, but sometimes you've got to look at the bigger picture and trust others to do the job for you. You people are fresh out of training while we've grown dull over years of guard duty and little exercise. I've even heard you ranked second of your Trainee group. Me? Not even close. You'll be a heck of a lot more useful here than I'd ever be."

His protest dying on his lips, Reiner simply nodded, and one of the Garrison soldiers hoisted Connie up before following Adolf out of the building.

**And that's today's chapter, everyone. It's kinda short but I promise the next one will be longer, don't worry. And sorry to any fans of Connie, but I just couldn't let them all go scot-free, and I felt this was the appropriate thing to do. Also this is AU, and I'm not going to follow the Canon plot mindlessly. Feel free to send angry reviews, but this is how it's going to be. In the next chapter, Armin & Co have another run in with our favorite rogue Titan-shifters.**


	5. Chapter 5

**And here's another chapter, Thanks for all the reviews, favorites and follows.**

**Karano: I'm sorry, I'm kind of confused by your review, because I can't see whether you mean that I should have more Eren and Mikasa in this story or you mean you aren't going to be angry about what I do to the rest of the cast? I'm a bit confused here.**

**Yoruko-Chan: Thanks for the compliments, positive reviews keep me going.**

**ArnaudB: Well, I appreciate all reviews even criticism. I have carefully gone over your post and decided to revise Chapter 1 a bit. I hope I have managed to make it a bit better, but on some counts I feel that we must agree to disagree. I'd like to point out that Mikasa did not take down three Titans with a single knife (It's actually a sword, she had two, and she drew two fresh ones just as she began the attack) and the stabbing (If you mean the Titans she took out on foot, I apologize, I'll change it, but if you mean the inside-kill, I thought I made it clear it was a really lucky shot). And about the "They have to cut it for some length in order for it to work" I always figured they just had to sever the spine (which can be done by stabbing as well) for it to work, and the reason they use long, sweeping cuts is that they don't actually always know for sure the ****_exact_**** location of the weakspot (And they're usually moving at high speeds so they don't exactly have a lot of time to find it) and thus use longer slices in order to have a bigger chance of hitting the 1m tall and 10 cm wide weakspot. **

**Of course, if you have evidence to contrary I'd be happy to see it and thus change my opinion. I'll admit that the blades not breaking was kind of bad and I'm changing that part now. And the whole "Engaged" part, I'll admit I could've done it better, but what I meant by "Enemies" was that they were each engaging a single Titan. That's another thing I'm looking to correct.**

**And about the swearing… The fact that Mikasa never swears (at least outside, internal monologue is different) is kinda the point. What I was trying to portray here was that Mikasa finally snaps and relents into blind rage, and at that point she isn't going to care about whether she swears or not. From the show, we can see that the only thing Mikasa shows overt emotion is Eren. When Eren is rescued she cries openly and likewise here, when Eren (seemingly, of course) dies and she believes that the Titans are mocking Eren's death, his ultimate sacrifice for mankind, she flies into a rage. She'd (mostly) human too, and even she can't hide all of her emotions under the heaviest of stresses. I'm sorry if I didn't portray this adequately, I will seek to do better as I revise Chapter 1.**

**Kaika-sama: already answered to you by PM so there isn't much to say other than thanks for the support.**

**maesde: thanks for the support.**

**NoNameAvailable Bis: Yeah, I know it was short, the next one will be longer. And yeah, Connie's out of the war but at least he gets to live.**

**Trost district, on top of the Supply HQ building. T-Minus 50 minutes.**

After checking that the HQ was secure and refilling his own gas tanks, Armin had climbed on top of a nearby building to survey the surroundings and to see what happened to the Female Titan.

The carnage was unbelievable.

Dozens of Titan bodies and skeletons lied around, slowly steaming as they turned into vapor. Several buildings had been crushed, and the pavements was cracked and cratered all around. Blood and entrails had been splattered everywhere, and there were even more disgusting things to be seen, but Armin did his best to ignore them.

In the middle of it all was the Female Titan, her body covered in blood and her skin marred by dozens of bite wounds, steaming and slowly closing up. She was currently pinned against a ruined building by an immense horde of Titans, from 7-meters to all the way up to 15-meters. They were all grappling the Female, keeping her in place even as their jaws worked to rip and tear her flesh.

"If only we could get that Titan as an ally…" Armin mused aloud.

"I agree!" Reiner said as he, Bertolt, Annie and Jean landed on the rooftop, having followed Armin. "If it can do that kind of damage to the Titans alone, just think of the possibilities of what we could do with an ally like that! And if we get it alive, we might finally learn something new about the Titans. If we do nothing, we'll gain nothing!"

"Are you all completely insane?!" Jean questioned. "We barely made it through in the storage room, and now you want to take on twice as many Titans with just the five of us without any kind of support, to say nothing of that gigantic Titan that apparently is far smarter and stronger than the rest? Weren't you just a few minutes ago saying that "I have no real inclination to find out" "

"No to both!" Armin answered. "No I've been thinking about it. And you're right. We got our asses very nearly kicked in the storage room where we had the advantage and the initiative. So that means we need some sort of trump card here. So what I'm saying is that we should help the Female Titan. She appears to be smarter than the rest and has made no move to attack humans. So maybe we can reason with her, or if not, at least we'll gain useful Intel. And with that sort of creature at our side, humanity could finally make progress against the Titans for the first time in a hundred years! The question we should be asking is not whether we should or could do it, it should be whether we, and the humanity as a whole, can afford _not_ doing it. It is our duty to protect humanity by any means necessary, and if there's even a remote chance of getting the Female Titan on our side, we should take it!"

"And weren't you all for taking the advantage it could provide?" Annie supplied.

"Are you serious?" Jean countered. "I meant as a _distraction_! Not as an ally! As I said before, this is _way_ beyond our paygrade. And even if, by some miracle, this mystery Titan of yours just so happens to be intelligent enough to understand speech, we can convince it and so on, we would have nothing to bargain with! I'd imagine it'd want an agreement that the Garrison won't attack it, but we have no authority to make such a deal! This isn't some fairy tale where everything magically turns out okay! This is reality!"

"Look, if there's a chance this could work out we need to take it! If not for us then for all the people who died today!"

"Oh for fucks sake, if this is some sort of bizarre plan to avenge Eren-"

"HRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"

At precisely that moment, Jean was interrupted by a roar and the sound of something heavy being hurled through the air. As the five of them turned to look, the Female Titan had thrown one of the smaller Titans flying in the air and crashing on the building on the opposite side of the street. Having freed her arm, she grabbed an 11-meter class by the neck and squeezed. Before long, the Titan collapsed with a crunch. With both hands free, she then dispatched the rest of the Titans in short order. It then turned to look straight at Jean, the grey eyes seeming to bore into his soul.

She gave out another roar, crouched down muscles coiling and, with more speed and agility than anything of that size has any right to possess, she leapt at them. Covered in blood, gore and bite wounds and her black hair flapping in the wind, the 15-meter tall Titan was quite a terrifying sight to most, especially as she barreled through the air straight towards you at high speed with her fists raised over her head to smite you like an insect.

Jean pissed himself.

Armin knew that they couldn't possibly dodge in time, and spent his time thinking.

_'So she attacked us when Jean mentioned Eren… This points more and more to her being Mikasa. Well, no time to dodge so I guess this is it.'_

Just as the fists were about to slam at the rooftop and reduce them to toothpaste, Armin closed his eyes and prayed.

He heard the sound of a crash and felt a powerful gust of wind knock into him, but the annihilating fists never came. Armin barely dared to open his eyes, but he did.

It was the Male Rogue Titan, who had, for some unfathomable reason, decided to tackle the Female mid-leap.

_'What? Okay, there's no way this is coincidence anymore. Both of those things are sentient. And, if the Female is, or at least was, Mikasa, considering the similarities between them, that other one must be a person too. So who exactly…'_

Armin's musings were interrupted by the very same Titans he had been thinking about roughly crashing into the street, creating a large crater. The Male landed on top, his elbow crushing the Female's face to the ground, before she retaliated by bringing her legs up and twisting her body to fling the Male over her.

Armin, Jean, Reiner, Annie and Bertolt just watched in shock as the two war gods rose from the ground and began to circle each other. After a few moments of maneuvering, the Female's balance wavered as she stepped on a pile of rubble. It was over in an eyeblink, but that was all that the Male needed. He charged, rapidly covering the distance between them and, with a roar, performed a jumping punch straight at the Female's face.

The two of them then engaged on a rapid hand-to-hand battle, blocking, punching, parrying and kicking. Both sides managed to get hits in but the Male was on the offensive, not giving the Female any time to establish a good defense and returning any blows he suffered back with twice the force. The Female was on the defensive, simply parrying the Male's attacks with the occasional counterattack. This continued for a while, until the Female changed her strategy.

As the Male was swinging another punch at her, instead of parrying she sidestepped the blow at lightning-fast speed before aiming a chop with her right arm at the back of his neck. Only a last-moment movement saved the Male from having his spine snapped, the blow only taking off a chunk of flesh from the side of his neck.

As the Male spun to face her once more, the Female Titan used her left arm to grab his hair and pull his face down to meet her knee. After that she stepped behind the Male and aimed another punch to the nape of his neck, but the Male dodged and sent her flying with a wild punch.

The Female landed on her feet, digging a trail through the stone pavement, but the Male gave her no pause. He followed her and pressed on with series of furious punches that cracked bones and forced the Female back and, with a final punch, sent her flying back-first into a building.

The Male then followed his assault up by grabbing her by the throat before stomping his foot down, destroying the Female's leg from the knee down.

_'He used the same attack as the Female did on him in their first battle! So they are definitely learning…'_

The Female Titan, with her leg destroyed, could not move to protect herself as the Male grabbed her and delivered devastating chop to the back of her neck before shoving her against the building. He then took a step away from her, drew his fist back and punched her with all of his might.

The power behind the blow was enough that the Male's fist shattered as it came to contact with the Female's abdomen, but it had also delivered enough force to send her flying into the building… no, _through _the building, Armin corrected.

The building collapsed as fifteen meters of Titan were forcibly hurled through it, and the Female was buried under the shower of masonry and wood.

The Male Titan let out a victorious roar, the sound reverberating through the streets, before staggering for few steps and then sinking to one knee, holding his stump of a hand. The whole Titan shook as he fell to the ground on his stomach and his hands in front of him, steam pouring from the body as it began to vaporize right in front of their eyes.

Lumps of hair, skin, bone and muscle fell off in layers, turning to steam. The Titan convulsed and twitched as if sobbing, and shook off even more bits of his own body until even the muscles that shook the body melted away and the Titan turned even more grotesque. There was some sort of lump on the base of his neck, however. It almost looked like a person. In fact, it looked a lot like… Like… Like…

"What. The. Hell." Jean summarized what all of them must have been thinking.

That lump was _Eren_.

Before any of the other four could so much as twitch, Armin was already grappeling down towards his first, best and pretty much only friend.

_'OhgodwhatishegoingtosayaboutMikasaHowamIgoingtotellhim?'_

Unharmed save for his jacket missing and the left sleeve of his shirt being torn. _And his arm wasn't bitten off, _like Armin remembered it had been. So was this some sort of regenerating thing?

As he reached Eren, Armin enveloped the boy in a brief hug before checking him over. Just like he had seen, there were no marks of his earlier injuries against the bearded Titan, not even blood, save for the torn sleeve. He decided to hug him again, just to make sure he was real and wasn't going anywhere, and barely noticed Jean, Reiner, Bertolt and Annie landing next to him.

"So that was Eren all along…" Jean mused aloud. "So that means that the Female is…"

"The Female is most likely Mikasa." Armin supplied.

As the rest of them turned to look at Armin, he explained. "I suspected that it might be so, but I had no evidence, but just think about it. That new Titan appears just as Mikasa disappears, she's Female, and she has Mikasa's hair, her eyes and her combat skills. And now we find out that it is possible for a human to become a Titan. Coincidence? I don't think so."

"But… But that's impossible!" Jean shouted just as Reiner said "But that doesn't make any sense… Wait. Yes it _does!_" And if Jean or Armin were actually paying attention to him, they might have heard Bertolt mutter "Why is there two of them? He said there would only be one. _Why is there two of them_?"

**"RRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"**

Before they could discuss it further, they were interrupted by a furious roar coming from where the Female Titan had been buried.

"Oh don't tell me she's-"Armin said, while Jean's response was shorter and to the point.

"Fucknuggets."

The Female Titan burst from the ruins of the building, smashing aside wood and stone as she went. She cleared the debris and sprinted for them, lightning dancing on her grey eyes as she raised her fist to squash them once and for all.

Startled by the surprise appearance, Armin recoiled and moved from between the Female and Eren.

_'Whatever god there may be, just please let this work…'_

As soon as the line-of-sight between Eren and her was clear, something happened to the Female Titan. She simply stopped mid-charge, just staring at the boy before her. Armin got a good look at her eyes, and the only metaphor for what he saw that he could come up with was glass shattering, or maybe a rubber band being stretched to its limit before snapping.

The Female simply collapsed on the spot like a puppet whose strings had been cut. She too began the process of steaming, twitching and convulsing her bodyparts off until there was simply bone and muscle left, and the scarf-clad form of Mikasa Ackerman emerged.

**Aaaand that's it for today, thanks for reading this fic of mine. I hope you're all happy with this, and next time finally get back to the POV of our main character, Mikasa.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Here's another Chapter. I know I said we'd get to Mikasa's POV but on further thought I realized that it might make more sense from Eren's POV. I apologize, but I think this is the better choice. Mikasa will be next after this.**

**Yoruko-Chan: Well, obviously I have plans for that but I won't reveal them here.**

**Guest: Thanks for your support, hope you're satisfied.**

**maesde: Well, obviously neither of them are going to be happy about it.**

**NoNameAvailable Bis: Well, that's for me to know and you to wonder about. And Yeah, Bertolt is kinda like Marco in that regard, nobody ever notices his existence, he's just sort of… ****_There._**** In this chapter we get to see the confrontation with the Military and I've already mostly figured how the Battle to retake Trost will play out. And it would be bad to have two Titans in a rampage, but you'll just have to wait and see. As for their "tendencies to beat the shit out of each other", the explanation for that should become apparent pretty soon. Thanks for another wonderful review, its things like this that keep me writing.**

**Also many thanks to ArnaudB who has helped me correct many grammatical errors and with whom I have had a long conversation via PMs that has given me ideas on how I will be continuing the plot.**

**Just outside the wall between Trost district and the inside of Wall Rose, T-Plus/Minus ?**

Eren Yeager remembered a particularly weird dream. His memories of it were confusing and mostly didn't make any sense.

He remembered world-ending hatred, white-hot oceans of fury and fiery volcanoes of rage. He remembered pain unlike any other, agony so deep and intense words could not even begin to describe it.

It was a dream, not unlike his feverish nightmares as a child, or that one night during training when someone smuggled alcohol to the dorm rooms. He remembered emotions, impressions and words, but not the details of the events linked to them.

He remembered his guilt over his failure, his anger at the cruel world. He remembered his triumph as he rose back once more and as his enemies fell and his frustration as one of them proved to be a tougher opponent than the rest. He remembered his indignation that this bitch _dared_ to stand against his anger, to position herself between Eren and his just revenge.

He remembered the battle with his enemy and his growing irritation at his inability to overcome this foe with the same ease that he had the others before it. He remembered his rage, humiliation, failure and bitterness over his defeat. He remembered the exhaustion deep in his bones, the urge to simply give up and lay down to sleep. All would be well when he woke. But he remembered that he was Eren Yeager.

He does _not_ simply "give up".

He remembered the pain, the single-minded goal to find that bitch and make her pay. He remembered fighting his way through others, but they were insignificant, under his notice.

Finally, he had found the bitch attacking a bunch of ants, feeble little creatures. He remembered having seen some during his rampage but he had ignored them completely. While he held no compassion towards the ants, his foe had seemed interested in destroying them, and he had seen no need to allow her to do so.

He remembered the battle, how the exhaustion began to truly set in, and how he realized he was slowing down. He remembered the despair over how he was tiring too quickly and how he would fail without achieving his goal. He remembered the words, and the resolve that had filled him then.

"If you win, you get to live. If you lose you die. But if you don't fight, you can't possibly win and so you die anyway. So **_FIGHT_**"

He remembered having fought furiously, adamant on taking her down before falling.

And he remembered finally delivering the finishing blow to his nemesis, and throwing her away. After that the memories became even blurrier and harder to comprehend. He remembered the exhaustion settling in, and this time he had not been able to resist it. He remembered slowly slipping into darkness as his senses dulled even more, and the nothingness that came soon after.

And that was when Eren woke up.

It was not like any other awakening from a dream he had experienced before, for he was trapped in darkness, his senses blocked and his body without feeling and unresponsive to his commands, leaving him with only his thoughts. They were clear once more, free from the sluggishness that would have marked him as still sleeping.

Slowly, sensory input began to return. He felt his jaw move and form words even as he did not make them to. Gradually feeling and the sense of touch began to spread to his entire body, telling him that he was sitting, with his back against a wall, thought he could not seem to move a muscle by his own will. Torturously lethargically hearing began to return to him as well, and he could barely make out people talking.

"What the hell is he saying? Is he talking in his sleep?"

"It's just one kid, we should overwhelm him before the others wake up"¨

"That brat is waking up! We need to move, now!"

"A tiny rat like that won't stand a chance again all of us! I say we take him on now and kill the rest while they sleep."

Then, a familiar voice, this time clearer and much closer to him.

"I may be a rat, but rats are dangerous even to cats when they have been cornered or when their family is put under a threat. You have done both. Do not underestimate me!"

But all of that was overshadowed by his own voice, mumbling words that he had not instructed it to over and over again.

"I'll kill them all. I'll kill them all. I'll kill them all. I'll kill them all. I'll kill them al-."

With a jolt, his body returned to his control, and his eyes flew open. He had to squint at the light, but he began to make out shapes and forms.

He was sitting with his back against a corner in the wall, formed by the protrusions on the main wall that marked the immense floodgate for the river that flowed through Trost district before continuing into the wilderness of Wall Maria. Looking around, Eren saw that he was surrounded by dozens of soldiers with their blades out and pointing towards him. The only thing standing between them and him was Armin, his blades drawn as well, facing towards the ring of soldiers.

Wait a second. The same Armin who could barely stand up to himself and who Eren had always had to save from bullies was standing against over two dozen soldiers? What the fuck?

Armin turned back to look at him, and Eren could see the relief in his face.

"Eren! Are you alright? Are you conscious?"

"Yeah... What is going on here?"

"Eren, you need to tell me everything! Talk to me! We're going to figure this out, somehow!" Armin's voice was panicked and shaky.

"Armin?" Now Eren was even more confused. What the hell was going on?

"Did you hear him?" One of the soldiers said.

"He was like, "I'm going to kill them all."," Another one responded.

"Yeah. He was talking about us!" The third one added in.

"He's going to kill and eat us all if we don't do anything!" The second one stated.

"Wha-? Armin. Wait. What are they talking about?"

And then it hit him.

Firstly, his left arm was still firmly attached to his body.

Secondly, he wasn't in the stomach of the bearded Titan.

He quickly checked himself over, finding no wounds whatsoever. Not even the ones he was sure he had suffered when his squad was near-completely annihilated.

_'What the- Was that all just a dream?'_

No.

While his left arm was still attached to his body, the sleeve was torn at the area he remembered the bearded Titan's teeth clamping down and severing the arm. In addition, his equipment and clothes were damaged from the previous battle. It was as if his flesh had grown back but his equipment remained the same…

_'Like a Titan..._

_So if that really happened… Could it be that those memories weren't of a dream either?'_

"TRAINEE YEAGER!" Eren was shaken out of his thoughts and his attention was drawn to the bearded form of Kitts Verman, captain of the local part of the Garrison and currently in charge of the defense effort of Trost.

"YOU HAVE COME TO YOU SENSES, I SEE!"

He was also notorious for his lack of indoor voice. Or any other voice level than "Trying to break your eardrums".

"THE THREE OF YOU HAVE EXHIBITED TRAITOROUS BEHAVIOUR BY ATTACKING FELLOW SOLDIERS, RESISTING ARREST AND OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE! THEREFORE, I MUST DECIDE WHAT TO DO WITH YOU!"

The captain fell silent for a moment, drawing in breath before continuing.

"IF YOU TRY TO PULL ANY TRICKS OR MOVE FROM THAT SPOT, YOU'LL BE EATING HIGH EXPLOSIVE CANNONSHELLS!" He pointed his hand up to the extension in the wall where a cannon was pointed towards the corner they were holed in, ready to fire.

"I'll get straight to the point. What are you really?" the Captain questioned, his voice low and serious.

The Captain once again paused to draw in his breath before shouting at full volume:

"HUMAN! OR! TITAN?!"

_'What._

_'What the hell kind of question is that?_

_Why is everyone looking at me like that?_

_Like I'm some sort of freak…' _

"I fail to understand the question, Sir!"

Captain Verman went absolutely livid at that.

"ARE YOU PLAYING DUMB WITH ME YOU LITTLE SHIT?! NOT THAT IT HELPS YOU ANY! TRY ANYTHING AND WE BLOW YOU AND YOU LITTLE BAND OF TITAN-TRAITORS WILL BE SWIMMING IN SHRAPNEL!"

He stopped for a second and gestured towards the assembled soldiers.

"PEOPLE SAW WHAT YOU DID! THEY WERE RIGHT THERE, WATCHING AS YOU CAME OUT OF THAT TITAN! WE ARE FACING AN INVASION BY YOUR KIND, AND IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO YOU ARE, YOU HAVE GIVEN ME REASON TO ANNIHILATE YOU AND SO I WILL! OUR EXISTENCE IS AT STAKE, AND THERE'S NO ROOM OR TOLERANCE FOR LOOSE ENDS LIKE THE THREE OF YOU!"

_'Three of us? But there's only-'_

Eren looked around himself before noticing her.

It was Mikasa, his overprotective adoptive sister, slumped against the wall next to him, unconscious. Ignoring the soldiers, the cannon and the captain, Eren looked her over with worried eyes. Her jacket was gone and her shirt was damaged and splattered with blood. Miraculously, her red scarf was still wrapped around her neck, covering her lower face. Her storm-grey eyes were shut and her left sleeve was gone, ripped at the bicep with a higher concentration of blood-splatters around it. The arm however, was clean and in perfect condition, in stark contrast to the left one that was covered in grit and dirt.

_'Just like mine… So they accuse me of being a Titan, of having transformed into a monster… Does that mean that Mikasa did too?_

_No._

_I may be a monster but Mikasa is __**not**__. She just isn't. It's not possible.'_

Clearing his throat, Eren spoke:

"Who did this to her? I'll rip-"

"DON'T YOU RECOGNIZE YOUR OWN HANDIWORK, SCUM?! YOU AND THAT LITTLE BITCH HAD A SMACKDOWN RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF EVERYONE'S VIEW!"

_'No…_

_So does that mean that the enemy I had been fighting in my dream was… was… was…'_

Eren felt a bit weak in the stomach, and he just barely managed to keep it in long enough to move away from Mikasa, before emptying his innards by vomiting to the rough stone floor.

"no…" Eren said in weak, feeble voice, barely in control of his functions and tears streaming down his face.

"DON'T YOU TRY CROCODILE TEARS AT ME, YOU AND THAT SKANK BEAT EACH OTHER UP NEAR THE EASTERN DISTRICT BEFORE MOVING TO THE SUPPLY HQ, DEVASTATING DOZENS OF BUILDINGS AND CAUSING MASSIVE DAMAGE! DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?!"

"…"

Eren was too deep in shock to answer.

"I see." This time, the Captain's voice was low and Eren could not pick up any emotions. He then raised his right arm to the air, signaling to the cannon crew, and the ring of soldiers retreated several steps back

"TEN!"

"They're going to shoot us!" Armin shouted, not having moved an inch even with all of the threats the Captain had leveled against them.

_'No way… They wouldn't do that…'_

But Eren couldn't even kid himself. He knew the military protocol from years of training, and as much as he loathed the man for what he was doing, Eren knew that the Captain had followed it to the letter. And right now the protocol called for their immediate elimination by any means necessary.

Maybe it would be- No, not going to go there. He had Armin and Mikasa to take care of. He couldn't abandon them. He wouldn't. It was his own saying after all, fight if you want to live and all that.

"NINE!"

It was incomprehensible to even think of such a thing, and Eren felt his ears prickle with shame.

Armin, his best friend, who had stood by him, helped him through rough times and helped him up whenever he fell. The one who had stood watch over him and Mikasa, even defying the military to keep them safe. The boy who, despite losing his own parents and grandfather, put his own grief to a back-stage to help Eren struggle through life after Zhiganshina fell. He who was always there to give him advice or be the shoulder to cry against or simply be there for to Eren to talk to about things he could not discuss with Mikasa.

"EIGHT!"

And Mikasa, his sister whom he had saved that night seven years ago, and who in turn had saved him. Both from the third kidnapper and himself, by first helping him when he was being strangled by the son of a bitch who had been responsible for what happened to the Ackermans, and later when she had kept him alive during those three long years of near-starvation and emotional turmoil before they joined the 104th. And even if he would never say it aloud, Eren did, at some level, enjoy the care and support he received from Mikasa. It was nice to know that there was someone who was willing to come to his defense and help him back up no matter what happened and  
what he did.

Eren knew that he was not always the most likable person to be around and often insulted or otherwise hurt his friends. Even worse, he rarely noticed and when he did he was too prideful to apologize. But that's why he secretly valued his friends even more; they still stuck by him despite all that he did.

"SEVEN!"

Eren's two companions had not forsaken him, not when he threw hissy fits for the stupidest of reasons, not when he insulted or degraded them or hurt their feelings and not when he made their lives far more difficult that they needed to be. They even followed him to the Military, and while he had criticized their decision out loud then, inwardly he had been glad that his friends had stuck with him.

_'And if they could suffer through all that without a single complaint or whine, then by God I am not going to let any harm come to them while I still breathe.'_

"SIX!"

He looked up at the cannon pointed at them, and knew that they couldn't run. The military wouldn't be stupid enough to _not_ post any soldiers on top of the wall so escape was impossible through there, and with Mikasa still unconscious they couldn't fight their way out. And even if they did, the crew could simply readjust the cannon before firing again, and if that didn't work it wasn't like they couldn't simply turn more cannons around to face them instead of the mindless Titan rampaging in Trost.

They were stuck.

"FIVE!"

The only logical option left then was to _block_.

_'If only I could turn into a Titan again. At least that might get us out of this mess. How does one turn into a Titan, in any case? There has to be some sort of trigger to it…'_

"FOUR!"

As Eren thought and wracked his brain for answers, his eyes fell upon the key he hang around his neck, and something clicked. Somewhere deep in the back of his head something shifted, and long-forgotten memories flooded his mind. They were fragmentary at best, individual images and concepts with no common theme. Eren closed his eyes and concentrated on the memories.

His Father's eyes, something disturbing lurking deep within.

A forest.

The crazed expression on Grisha Yeager's face.

His Father's form pinning Eren face down into the dirt.

A madman's voice, high-pitched and shaky. "**He** is coming, and this is the only way. I didn't want to do it. But **He** forced me, **HE** MADE ME DO IT!" The voice grew to a scream before dropping back down in volume. "I couldn't resist. **He** is coming, and so I have to do this."

The prickling feeling of a needle piercing his skin.

"THREE!"

The voice again, this time slightly calmer, but still far off from normal. " Now remember Eren, you must keep this in mind. Blood and determination. Those are the activators. Keep them in mind. You need to master this power. You must master it and then destroy the Titans. You- You need to go to the basement and use the key, and you will have the answers-"

Then, an interruption.

Mikasa's voice, too unclear to understand words. Confused. Angry, but also desperate.

The weight on Eren's back lessening slightly as Grisha adjusted his position and then another shift as something slammed to him.

Mikasa crying out.

Blood, splattering on to his clothes and forming small stains.

Something heavy thumping to the forest floor.

"TWO!"

The crazy voice returning, suddenly calmer and less shaky than before. "Sorry about that. Now, you need to remember. You must master this power if you want to protect your friends. Protect humanity. Avenge Zhiganshina. Avenge C-Carla" It said, stuttering a bit at the name of Eren's mother. And remember; Blood and determination."

Fading to darkness.

"ONE!"

Eren's eyes snapped open.

_'Blood and determination… I wonder…'_

He bit down on his hand, blood bursting from the wound just as the Captain brought his hand down and the cannon spit out a burst of flame and with it a cannon shell filled to the brim with explosives.

_'I WILL NOT LOSE ANY MORE OF MY FAMILY!'_ Eren roared in his mind, and an explosion of steam blasted from him to all directions, covering the surrounding area and engulfing the three of them in a thick cloud whilst the cannonshell whistled through the air.

**And that's that, next Chapter it's finally time for Mikasa's POV again. Thanks for all of the reviewers and other people who supported this by Favoriting, Following or even just reading this. You people keep me going. Happy Christmas to everyone who celebrates that sort of thing, I ****_may_**** have the time to update again before Christmas but no promises. Though I will have one ready by New Year unless something comes up.**


	7. Chapter 7

**Seriously, people? A single review? I am disappointed. Was the last chapter really ****_that_**** bad? Whatever, I'm not giving up yet. So here's another chapter. The fight scene in the flashback was inspired by an image I found when I was digging around the Tvtropes Characters page for Attack On Titan. Basically it's Annie and Mikasa duking it out and as soon as I saw it, I needed to include a scene where that happened. Sorry for the delay on the update, but my time has been taken by having been ill lately, spending Christmas with my family and problems with moving my files to my new computer and getting Word to actually work on the damn thing.**

**maesde: Thanks, reviews are the lifeblood of a writer. It's nice to have you and Yoruko-Chan reviewing nearly all of my chapters.**

**Trost District T-Minus/Plus ?**

Mikasa Ackerman was dreaming.

It was no ordinary dream, that much she could tell. She dreamt of death, of annihilating the Titans with her bare hands and taking revenge for Eren.

It was also completely absurd.

As much she would like to believe otherwise, the dream was far too unrealistic for it to be true. For one, the battle made no sense. A human could not take on Titans like she did in her dream, no matter how good they were. Secondly Mikasa was already dead.

Or was she?

She was pretty sure that she was.

Her last memories before she entered the dream were fuzzy, but she remembered being surrounded by hordes of Titans with no escape route. Mikasa was most likely dead, devoured by the Titans before being regurgitated out and her body left to lie before eventually decomposing.

So what was this, then?

Was this some sort of Afterlife, a punishment for her failure?

It was the only really logical possibility she could come up with.

Or at least more logical than the possibility that the dream was true. But that was simply absurd. Reality didn't work that way. You didn't get second chances like that.

And even if you did, Mikasa had already used hers up when Eren saved her.

A chance that she had failed.

It made much more sense that this was some cruel trick, a hallucination to torment her whilst she awaited whatever judgment that may come. She wished that she might see her family, both adoptive and biological, once more before being cast to whatever hell awaited her, but she didn't really think it would happen.

The living world was cruel. Why should the Afterlife be any different?

This dream was getting even weirder, it was unlike any other she had ever experienced. For one, usually she was, you know, _involved_ in the actual dream, instead of watching from the sidelines like she did just now. It was like watching someone else's dream, but not quite.

She felt each of the blows, strains and wounds her dream-self suffered, but the sensations were distant, detached.

She felt each of the blows, strains and wounds her dream-self suffered, but the sensations were distant, detached.

She felt her body move and fight with the same moves she would have used herself, but she did not direct it.

She felt the anger and grief run through her veins but she couldn't, for the life of her, understand _why_ she was so angry.

She saw her dream-body wade through the Titan hordes, some of the accursed creatures falling near immediately, some of them taking their time. One of them in particular, a brown-haired male, slowed her down significantly but it eventually died like the rest, its broken and steaming body left lying in the ruins of the once-proud city of Trost.

Finally, after jumping, boxing, wrestling and punching her way through countless Titans, it seemed like she couldn't take it anymore, and the Titans were on her, pinning her down and finishing her off. She couldn't honestly say she wasn't relieved that this confusing nightmare would come to an end, and she could move on.

But then, as she waited to die, a voice came from somewhere beyond her sight. It was angry, insulting and degrading. But that wasn't what caught Mikasa's attention. It was the content of those words

_"-This is some sort of bizarre plan to avenge Eren-"_

_"Eren."_

_Eren._

**_Eren._**

How could she have forgotten?

She remembered it now.

The news of his death.

By Titans.

Her own suicidal charge.

And Eren.

The memories of the cabin in the woods, of her savior, came back to her. She remembered the nights when Eren had comforted her and offered a shoulder to cry mourn her dead parents against. How he had made sure that the children of their neighborhood would accept her as their own, how he introduced her to Armin. How the Yeager family had taken her in and treated her as one of their own.

For the first time, Mikasa dared to hope that maybe it wasn't all a dream.

If the world was beautiful enough to give her Eren when she needed it, maybe it could give her a chance for revenge. And for the first time, she dared to hope that whatever would come after this, it might not be that bad.

The world of the living was cruel. But it was also beautiful. Why should the Afterlife be any different?

But above all, she remembered how all of that was taken away from her.

By the Titans.

The detached feeling disappeared, and Mikasa began to feel what was happening to her body. She was pinned down by a dozen Titans of varying sizes.

They would all die.

She turned her head around and saw where the voice that had mentioned Eren in an insulting manner. It was a bunch of frail little ants, standing nearby, watching.

Probably laughing at her.

Laughing at Eren.

Mikasa Ackerman saw red.

* * *

Mikasa's rage faded as she crashed through the building the Brown-haired Titan had thrown her through. The infuriating creature had apparently not had enough and decided to come for more. She had been happy to oblige him, even though it slowed down her vengeance on the ants a little longer.

At least until it became apparent that her revenge might not be just slowed down.

Until it became apparent that it might be stopped entirely.

The Brown-haired Titan fought like possessed, not giving her an inch and forcing her to the defensive. She managed to wound him as well, but in the end the Titan managed to hurl her through a nearby building, burying her in the rubble.

As she lied there in the cold darkness of her soon-to-be grave, Mikasa, feeling detached from her body once more and taking that as mark that her time was up, mentally readied herself for what was to come. She had done her part. Now, all she wanted to do was to simply lie down and sleep. And on some level, Mikasa knew that if she slept now she would never wake again.

But she was okay with it. She had slain dozens of Titans in vengeance for Eren. What more could anyone possibly want from her?

As Mikasa laid there under the rubble thinking, memories began to resurface on her mind. Curiously enough, they were from their training in the 104th. Specifically from her fight with Annie after she had seen the Bitch and Eren in an… unusual position during hand-to-hand training, and decided to break them up by throwing Reiner at them.

She managed to smile at the memory of Annie's face when she saw the 6-feet boy hurtling through the air, about to crash into them. She had approached her under the pretense of wishing to learn the moves Annie had been teaching Eren as well, and the Bitch had mumbled something about Humans and beasts before agreeing to a spar.

She remembered all too well what happened after that.

* * *

"Hey, are they actually going to fight it out?"

"Which one is it going to be?"

"I think it's going to be Annie."

"Are you stupid? I'll bet my whole dinner on Mikasa."

"I think Mikasa's got this."

"No way, Annie's really good!"

"But so is Mikasa."

Mikasa ignored the voices of their little audience. The only opinion that even mattered to him was Eren's, and he had decided to stay silent when Reiner questioned him. Instead, she stared on Annie, who had raised arms in a guard.

It was mid-summer, and the weather was slowly getting even warmer. The sky was clear, and the rain that had lasted for quite some time had stopped a few days ago and given way to an incredible heatwave. The Trainees finally got a break from theoretical teachings and a chance to go outside, so the Instructor Shadis had decided that today they would be practicing hand-to-hand combat, and then left them to their own devices.

Mikasa had spent most of the day wiping the floor with Reiner while ignoring Jean's constant glances at her. She still hadn't figured out what the deal with the boy was. He could be tolerable most of the time, but Mikasa disliked him on the principle that he constantly picked fights with Eren, and made annoying comments about how he was going to join the Military Police when he graduated.

The fight with Reiner was frustrating, not because he was difficult of an opponent, the opposite in fact. She knew for a fact that Reiner was holding back, and though she couldn't understand why he hadn't dropped the act once she had made it clear she could take it, but Mikasa couldn't fault him, because so was she. In recent times she had realized why Eren became so hostile to her anytime she received praise or succeeded.

The boy was angry, and jealous even, that she could easily succeed where he struggled through. She had gathered that Eren resented her for being better than him even while _he_ was the one with the motivation, he was the one who made it his life-mission to kill Titans.

Mikasa had tried to talk things out, but the boy wouldn't understand that just as Eren had his, Mikasa's mission in life was to protect Eren. Her attempts at reconciling had simply made things worse, and even Armin, usually the voice of reason, hadn't been able to stop Eren from storming out when Mikasa had confronted him.

Thus, Mikasa had taken up the habit of holding back during training, of not raising her hand when Shadis asked a question and of generally not doing her best at all times. Whenever Instructor Shadis walked by, she would limit herself so as to not to cause further friction between her and her adoptive brother. Eventually Eren had begun to cool down, and whilst Mikasa hadn't dared to test the ice yet, Eren hadn't yelled at her recently and had even smiled at her. It was slow, but at least it was progress.

But then the Bitch (as Mikasa had taken to calling her in her own mind) came along. For some reason, Eren had decided to ask Annie for close quarters training, and for some reason the Bitch had accepted, which eventually lead to their current situation.

Mikasa would be lying if she claimed she wasn't angry at Annie for getting so close to Eren, but partially she wished to see just how good Eren's new instructor was for herself. She didn't wish for Eren to waste her time learning under someone who had no idea what she was talking about, after all. She had acted on an impulse when she threw Reiner at the two of them, and this seemed to be the best follow-up.

After a little more staring and evaluating each other, in an unspoken agreement, the two of them lunged at each other, fists raised.

Just before they hit each other Annie dropped under Mikasa's fist before attempting to punch the Oriental girl in the stomach, but was blocked in turn by Mikasa's arm.

After trading several more blows, they retreated and began to circle each. Sweat was running down their bodies after many hours of training outdoors in the blistering heat of the sun. Everyone present had already gotten rid of their jackets, leaving only the white shirts.

Mikasa took a long look at Annie and gathered what she knew of her adversary.

From what Mikasa had seen earlier in the girl showers, Annie had a respectable six-pack and wasn't lacking muscle elsewhere either, but even just looking at the way the white fabric of her pants stretched as she moved, you could see that most of Annie's strength was in her legs. Her upper body, while not exactly scrawny by any measure, paled in comparison.

In comparison, Mikasa knew for a fact that with the possible exception of Reiner, she was easily the physically strongest member of the 104th, and she was pretty sure she could beat even him in endurance. Mikasa had, as long as she could remember, been abnormally strong for someone of her age and build. She hadn't interacted much with other children before she meeting Eren and couldn't really compare, which, when added to the fact that her memories of her life before Eren had become increasingly fuzzy over the years, she couldn't really be sure when it began. Mikasa supposed it might have had something to do with the murder of her original parents, but she couldn't say for sure. She had simply found that she could carry twice as much firewood as her adoptive brother, or lift and throw him with one arm. She knew Eren hated it when the subject was brought up, and they had settled into a routine where didn't bring it up unless they had to and danced around it if they did.

Mikasa was also a good fifteen centimeters taller than Annie and thus had longer reach, but the problem was that Annie had probably fought nothing _but_ people who were stronger and/or taller than her. And that meant that she had probably built her fighting style around negating such advantages, which didn't bode well for Mikasa. Against tough opponents she preferred to blitz them before they got over the surprise that the 5'6'' girl could and did exceed them in strength. As much as she disliked the girl, Mikasa did not believe her to be the type to underestimate her opponent, and after that first exchange she definitely wouldn't.

In sheer skill, Mikasa knew that she was good, amongst the best in the 104th, but she knew little of Annie's actual skill beyond hearsay and rumors. That was, after all, what she was here to ascertain.

After a little more circling around, Annie decided to break the ice by attacking. The blonde charged across the distance between them very rapidly, throwing a punch at Mikasa. The black haired girl moved to block, but just before they came into contact, Annie dropped low and kicked Mikasa in the leg. Disoriented, Mikasa only managed to block the first of the follow-up punches towards her face, and the remaining two hit her in the chest.

Mikasa retaliated by throwing a punch at her, but Annie sidestepped it and used her leg to sweep at Mikasa's left leg, forcing the taller girl to drop to one knee to prevent falling down. Having driven her opponent to the defensive, Annie smashed her elbow to Mikasa's face, and a mean-sounding crunch emanated from Mikasa's nose as blood dripped to her white shirt.

The pain wasn't unbearable and while the blood was going to be annoying later, it really wasn't a big deal. Mikasa had taken harder blows. But apparently the crowd didn't know that.

A gasp went through the gathered crowd, and Mikasa could hear some of them moving their bets to Annie. Mikasa's eyes darted to Eren, but the boy's expression was unreadable.

_'So be it.'_

With a grunt, Mikasa got back up and counter-attacked by driving her right fist to Annie's gut, before smashing her left to the blonde's jaw.

Mikasa could have followed it up, but she hesitated. She saw Eren's expression change ever so slightly, but Mikasa still couldn't read what emotions went through the boy's head. Anger? Concern over her new _girlfriend_?

Would she only hurt herself in the long run if she beat Annie?

But, these bitter thoughts were violently removed from Mikasa's mind by Annie punching her in the face, having taken advantage of her hesitation.

Mikasa punched Annie in the jaw once more, drawing a bit of blood from her lower lip, before the shorter girl retaliated by slamming her knee to Mikasa's stomach. Mikasa took a step back and threw a punch at Annie, but the blonde ducked under the blow and grabbed Mikasa by the sleeve and the front of her shirt, before flipping the taller girl over herself, throwing her face-first into the ground.

Annie quickly followed up her attack by landing a heavy blow to the back of Mikasa's head, knocking her face to the ground once more. It didn't knock her out, but it did succeed in disorienting the black-haired girl for a crucial few seconds, which Annie used to slam down on Mikasa's back and put her on a hold.

She landed on Mikasa's back, using her right arm to painfully twist Mikasa's hand backwards and hold it there, while she used her left elbow to press Mikasa's left hand to the ground, rendering it immobile. In the meantime, Annie used her left hand to press Mikasa's face to the ground, smearing blood across the dirt.

"Surrender," Annie's voice whispered in Mikasa's ear, too quiet for their audience to hear.

"Never."

Mikasa attempted to twist out of the hold, but Annie simply clasped on even tighter, twisting Mikasa's arm back and eliciting a grunt of pain.

"You are weak."

After tightening her hold to stop another escape attempt in response to her words, Annie continued.

"You willfully make yourself weaker in order to not hurt his feelings by advancing beyond him." She leaned in even closer, her voice hissing in the mid-day heat and dust that permeated the training field.

"What is Eren to you?"

"She is my brother." Mikasa hissed a response, not letting her calm façade drop.

"You wouldn't go that far just for a brother. I've seen the way you look at him. I saw how you looked at his reactions throughout the fight. What is he to you, really?"

"He is the reason I'm alive. He helped me when I suffered and gave me a home and a family when I lost mine." Mikasa didn't know why she was saying this now or to the Bitch, of all people, but she did nonetheless. "I owe him everything, and I would give away everything for him."

"Even your own friendship with him?" Mikasa didn't respond, and Annie continued.

"You hold back to preserve his feelings, or more accurately, to protect _yours._ You could give him the motivation to train harder, hard enough to have a chance against the Titans he hates so much, by being the milestone he needs to beat in order to prove himself. You hold back even though you could be the best in our class, thus hampering your ability to protect him. You, even in your anger against me, consciously held back in our battle, and thus learned nothing from it. I have even heard that you have cut down on your workout schedule recently. Why? Why would you do that, even when it might endanger Eren down the line? Why do you say you would give away everything for Eren, even when you aren't willing to risk your friendship with him?"

Annie let go of the hold and shoved Mikasa, still shocked by the blonde's words, away from her, the black-haired girl stumbling to the ground.

"Think about it. Think about what it means to _really_ be ready to give away _everything_ for someone. Have a nice day."

The Bitch then stood up and left, leaving Mikasa lying down on the ground.

* * *

Those weren't especially fond memories, but they were necessary. After that battle, Mikasa had taken those words to the heart, and stopped holding back during training, and paid the Bitch back by utterly trouncing her in their re-match one and half months later. Eren had resented her and for a while their relationship plummeted, but over time things stabilized between them. During training, Mikasa could often see Eren irritated whenever Mikasa overshadowed him, but on the other hand, just as Annie had said he would, he threw himself at the training exercises ever harder, and his performance began to raise steadily. Mikasa couldn't keep herself from trying to protect Eren at every opportunity (not that she would even if she could) and the boy lashed back at him repeatedly, but mostly they settled into Mikasa hovering around and Eren tolerating her presence.

But it still didn't make any sense why these memories were surfacing right now. They didn't seem all that important in the grand scheme of things. Memories of her parents, all four of them, and Eren would have been far more appropriate.

Maybe even her subconscious wanted to screw her over.

Then, Mikasa saw something in the darkness.

No.

It was _someone._

As the shape got closer, Mikasa could make out who it was...

It was... _Annie?_

The hell?

**Kudos to those who manage to catch the most obvious Pirates of The Caribbean reference in the history of Pirates of The Caribbean references. And I'm really hoping for reviews here. They are my primary motivation after all. Also, for the nitpickers, yes, I know that Mikasa is 5'7'' but that was a flashback, she still has time to grow. Another thing to note here is that this is from Mikasa's perspective and thus her interpretation of the events may be a little flawed.**

**Next time, Mikasa's dream sequence continues and a bunch of other stuff happens, which may or may not include several speeches/lectures by short blondes of both genders. We will be staying in Mikasa's POV for quite some time, as she is the main character of this fic after all.**


End file.
